No Items, No Restorative Spells... Innate ability to heal?

[Neo Soul Gamer]

Hey guys,

Just wondering what you thought about the concept described in the subject. 

I'm envisioning a game that eliminates the need of restorative spells and items. To compensate, the ability to heal damage will be available to all characters, but they can only take turns to heal themselves and not each other.

It's breaking away from tradition, but for some reason this concept intrigues me. I'd like to discuss the pros and cons of a concept like this. Thoughts?

 

[_Shadow_]

There are games that implement such a system already.

Can not recall one right now but I can tell you one thing.

If the game is balanced, everything goes.

If a player can break your game suing the game rules, you did something wrong.

So you need to keep it challenging but not too hard or  too easy. Both are annoying.

It's not a bad or a good idea really. 

But if you combine it with stuff that break the game that would be an issue.

Balancing everything is the key of the success in my opinon.

 

[whitesphere]

The biggest con is is can dramatically lengthen boss battles.  In a classic RPG, the Healer spends his/her turns keeping the party alive/buffed while the others wail on the boss.    If you have each player able to Heal themselves, and only themselves, unless there is some way to focus all of an enemy's attacks on a character, the entire party will be spending a lot of turns healing themselves instead of attacking.  

If I were to do a system like that, I would probably grant a variety of interesting buffs/debuffs so the party has some way to ensure they actually have turns to attack instead of always being forced to Heal to stay alive, such as "Aggravate" (focus target) or "Defense Boost (against specific types of attack)".  Depending on the game story, maybe the players have profoundly different elemental resistances and most enemies focus on a single elemental attack type. 

As long as there is some way to influence the flow of battle, it can work.  You might even have characters who always have an innate Healing trait (i.e. werewolves or vampires) with specific obvious weaknesses...

 

[Neo Soul Gamer]

If you have each player able to Heal themselves, and only themselves, unless there is some way to focus all of an enemy's attacks on a character, the entire party will be spending a lot of turns healing themselves instead of attacking.  

Very good point.

So what if, in this case... We look at minimizing the penalty of death?

What if healing became just another angle of strategy as opposed to a necessity in battle? What if death was turned into "Knocked out", where the player is inactive for x number of turns before he/she is automatically revived?

EDIT: Or perhaps even a Front Row/Back Row mechanic similar to FFVI. Lower Damage output while automatically regaining health? 

 

[whitesphere]

Very good point.

So what if, in this case... We look at minimizing the penalty of death?

What if healing became just another angle of strategy as opposed to a necessity in battle? What if death was turned into "Knocked out", where the player is inactive for x number of turns before he/she is automatically revived?

That's possible, but it still lengthens boss battles.  So the choice is either "Heal to stay in battle" or "Get Knocked Out and lose the player for X rounds"   It would still be a poor tactical choice --- "Great, either my warrior Heals and I lose him for 1 round, or I lose him for X rounds."

What I might do is this:

1. Each player can Heal only themselves.

2. The entire party shares their Life Force.  If a party member would die, each party member will lose X HP instead, then the member revives the next round.  If even 1 party member cannot pay the penalty, the would-die party member dies.

 

[_Shadow_]

Very good point.

So what if, in this case... We look at minimizing the penalty of death?

What if healing became just another angle of strategy as opposed to a necessity in battle? What if death was turned into "Knocked out", where the player is inactive for x number of turns before he/she is automatically revived?

EDIT: Or perhaps even a Front Row/Back Row mechanic similar to FFVI. Lower Damage output while automatically regaining health? 

You can combine healing with damage. Double effect skills.

 

[Neo Soul Gamer]

That's possible, but it still lengthens boss battles.  So the choice is either "Heal to stay in battle" or "Get Knocked Out and lose the player for X rounds"   It would still be a poor tactical choice --- "Great, either my warrior Heals and I lose him for 1 round, or I lose him for X rounds."

True, but it doesn't necessarily have to be a wasted turn. I've always enjoyed battle systems like SMT's Press Turn or Chrono Cross' stamina system where you get the opportunity to attack multiple times in one turn. I'm thinking just a basic turn mechanic where each battler gets to spend their number of turns however they want, whether it be to heal themselves or attack.

1. Each player can Heal only themselves.

2. The entire party shares their Life Force.  If a party member would die, each party member will lose X HP instead, then the member revives the next round.  If even 1 party member cannot pay the penalty, the would-die party member dies.

That's actually a really cool idea. However, to include something like that in a game, you'd have to have it tie into the story and world lore. I've already established all of this, so this system would require an overhaul rather than a minor tweak. I may possibly be able to make it work.

The other thing is, if they can only heal themselves, but share the same life force... Then that technically means each healing spell is healing everyone. In which case, maybe the concept of "self-healing only" isn't a great idea after all.

 

You can combine healing with damage. Double effect skills.

 

Similar to absorb skills... Yes that can work too. And I can easily tie that my world lore. I find absorb skills under utilized in RPGs.

By the ways guys, thank you so much for this discussion. I'm actually taking notes and doing battle tests with each idea you throw at me to see if this works out. Once I flesh out a full idea, I'll probably take it to the Project Feedback forum. 

 

[BoluBolu]

I ever try this system, but I (sorry if a bit breaking the rule) add a regenaration item instead, I'm not implementing instant healing item, you know like real life, I add bread, milk, egg, something like that, but the effect is not an instant, it takes turn to heal. Something like 5 - 10% HP per turn, the percentage also depends on the item, and of course how much turn takes is also depends on the item. This way the player doesn't need to focus only to heal themselves each turn, but yet not get an instant healing skill/item, they need to think which move is the best to make, spent the turn to eat a bread(so the next turn they can regenarate a bit while taking damage) or do an all out attack and wait for the result XD Yeah I like this recovery system, because I always think instant heal is a bit ridiculous(IMHO).
 

 

[Neo Soul Gamer]

I ever try this system, but I (sorry if a bit breaking the rule) add a regenaration item instead, I'm not implementing instant healing item, you know like real life, I add bread, milk, egg, something like that, but the effect is not an instant, it takes turn to heal. Something like 5 - 10% HP per turn, the percentage also depends on the item, and of course how much turn takes is also depends on the item. This way the player doesn't need to focus only to heal themselves each turn, but yet not get an instant healing skill/item, they need to think which move is the best to make, spent the turn to eat a bread(so the next turn they can regenarate a bit while taking damage) or do an all out attack and wait for the result XD Yeah I like this recovery system, because I always think instant heal is a bit ridiculous(IMHO).

Gotcha. So that ties in with what I mentioned earlier about having a Back Row/Front Row mechanic, where the back row regenerates health.

Ideally... I want to get rid of item use and managing inventory altogether. In traditional RPGs, I always find items make things too easy. It's either that, or you really never find an actual use for most of what's in your inventory. I find that it also encouraged bad strategy, because no matter what course of action you take in battle, you just have to make sure you have enough items to heal yourself and you'll be alright.

 

[omen613]

What about giving each character a rather strong passive Regeneration skill like a lot of action games use.

So characters go on the offense, and when they get beat up real bad, they go on the defense and other characters can cover them or something till they recouped.

granted you would have to balance the regen with how strong the foes are.

 

[wallacethepig]

The problem that comes from each character only being able to heal themselves comes from a little thing called tempo. (If you play a lot of MtG, you already know what I'm talking about.) If you take a turn to heal, and the enemy takes a turn to attack, then you have gotten nowhere and you've either lost HP, MP or both. The enemy, on the other hand, has lost nothing. If you take a turn to attack, then you hurt the enemy, but you leave yourself open. If you lose (proportionally) more HP than your enemy, you have also gained nothing. The only way to win is to have strong heals, things that heal around 75% of your HP, weak enemy attacks that take away less than 50% of your HP, and alternate from healing and attacking every turn. Here's how it would shake out:

T1: HP: 100. Enemy HP (EHP): 200. You attack, enemy attacks.

T2: HP: 60. EHP: 150. You heal, enemy attacks.

T3: HP: 60. EHP: 150.You attack, enemy attacks.

T4: HP: 10. EHP: 100. You heal, enemy attacks.

T5: HP: 45. EHP: 100. You attack, enemy attacks.

T6: HP: 5. EHP: 50. You attack, enemy is defeated.

Once you figure out the rhythm, every battle becomes boring. Attack until you need to heal, then heal until you've regained enough HP to attack again. Rinse and repeat.

As for a solution, you could have players go twice. That way they have roughly three options a turn: all out attack, attack and heal, or all out heal. Battles would typically go one of two ways: all out attack one turn followed by an all out heal the next, or an attack and heal every turn.

If you're trying to implement this into RPG Maker, just give each party member an turn and make most skills inflict something akin to a "charging" status.

For example:

On Turn 1:

Party Member 1 does a minor heal and a minor attack.

Party Member 2 does a major heal.

Party Member 3 does a major attack.

Party Member 4 does a minor heal and a major attack.

On Turn 2:

Party Member 1 does a minor heal and a minor attack.

Party Member 2 does a major attack.

Party Member 3 does a major heal.

Party member 4 recovers from doing too many things in one turn, and only gets a minor heal.

And so on.

This way, you can utilize half-turns for healing while still keeping up the assault. It's still probably a good idea to have regen and absorb moves, but those can be implemented into this system. You can still have it so each player can only heal themselves. (It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to give enemies 2 turns, as well...)

Good luck with your game, and remember that balance and fun are key.

 

[Neo Soul Gamer]

Well said Wallace. 

So this ties in with my suggestion above where I mention a system similar to SMT series or Chrono Cross. Multiple moves/acts in one turn. I too was thinking that this is the best way to solve the pacing issue that you talked about.

Based on everyone's input, it really seems like the best solution is to implement a regeneration system of some sort. So here's a thought...

If I'm to give battlers multiple acts per turn, then I should also give them the ability to bank those acts for the next turn. Expanding on the regeneration system in this case would be easy. The more turns they have banked, the higher the regeneration rate. Seems simple enough I think.

What about giving each character a rather strong passive Regeneration skill like a lot of action games use.

So characters go on the offense, and when they get beat up real bad, they go on the defense and other characters can cover them or something till they recouped.

granted you would have to balance the regen with how strong the foes are.

I like this idea a lot. Battlers will, in effect, have step away from the battle for a bit. Everyone's suggestions are making me like the Front/Back Row mechanic more and more.

 

[Wavelength]

If it's just a move that restores your own HP, without any other situationality or restrictions, then you're putting your game at a higher risk for imbalanced battles.  Either you can outheal enemies' damage (making battles predictable, easy, and boring), or you can't (in which case there's only rarely a use for such a skill).

A possible way you could work this kind of skill in would be to make it require a specialized resource that builds up over time in each battle (see the IGMC game "Sacred Hearts: Promise" for an example of a decent way to do this - it's another game that uses no items and mostly self-healing).  Or you could give characters passives that heal them when they accomplish something in battle (such as landing a critical hit, evading an attack, or killing a certain type of monster).

Additionally, if your aversion to consumable items comes from a design choice for fun and balance, rather than a desire to streamline your game's mechanics for simplicity, then consider making healing items powerful but expensive (or rare).  This makes the balance target you need to hit much wider - if the player makes a mistake or simply is a couple levels too low for the battle, they can get by if they use their trump cards.  It's still not a good result, but it's not a game over.

 

[Eschaton]

For an RPG, you have a few options:

1) a designated healer that keeps everyone else from wasting their turns

2) a high-yield, low-cost healing option that justifies using a turn for something other than damage-dealing

3) health regen

Option one seems to be the most popular.

If you want to eschew healing options, then you should consider designing your battle system around health regen and combat options around buying your PCs time for their health to recover during combat. It would probably work best with ATB or a Mother/Earthbound clone.

Slowing the enemy, stopping their attacks, reducing damage, and increasing regen rate are some ideas that pop up from the top of my head. I imagine it would be similar to what Omen described.

 

[Ravenith]

You could take a look at how Guild Wars 2 handles healing. There is no dedicated healer class - instead, each class has a self-heal that also provides some utility based on that class's mechanic.

For example, Paladins tend to gain buffs (even offensive ones!) when they heal themselves, and Thieves have healing skills that also cause them to dodge or enter stealth mode.

 

[kerbonklin]

There is one major problem with a system of only being able to heal yourself.  What if a boss or mob does enough damage to the point where he can out-DPS your heal? You do not want your boss/mob to be weak enough where your heal can recover more than the boss/mob can dish out either. And if you barely have need to heal because boss/mobs are so weak, it removes a possible aspect of strategy to your battles of deciding when to heal.

Like for exmaple, in Legend of Dragoon for PS1, characters could heal their own heath by defending, and it was extremely broken (at least in the early game, stopped playing after realizing the following) where my heal-defends would be so potent that no boss or mob damage was ever a threat at all. It healed way too much compared to the damage I would take.  If it was designed to heal a little only, then there would arise a new issue where it's not worth defending to heal, making it a pointless feature. (just a tad extra survivability at most when defending)

 

[Neo Soul Gamer]

You could take a look at how Guild Wars 2 handles healing. There is no dedicated healer class - instead, each class has a self-heal that also provides some utility based on that class's mechanic.

For example, Paladins tend to gain buffs (even offensive ones!) when they heal themselves, and Thieves have healing skills that also cause them to dodge or enter stealth mode.

Very very good tip. I've just watched a couple of videos that explain the mechanics and features. Thanks.

There is one major problem with a system of only being able to heal yourself.  What if a boss or mob does enough damage to the point where he can out-DPS your heal? You do not want your boss/mob to be weak enough where your heal can recover more than the boss/mob can dish out either. And if you barely have need to heal because boss/mobs are so weak, it removes a possible aspect of strategy to your battles of deciding when to heal.

In my opinion, the problem you're describing isn't limited to games that allow self-healing. To me, that's just a game balancing issue. I could see this being an issue if there is only one battler to your party, otherwise I'm not worried.

Like for exmaple, in Legend of Dragoon for PS1, characters could heal their own heath by defending, and it was extremely broken (at least in the early game, stopped playing after realizing the following) where my heal-defends would be so potent that no boss or mob damage was ever a threat at all. It healed way too much compared to the damage I would take.  If it was designed to heal a little only, then there would arise a new issue where it's not worth defending to heal, making it a pointless feature. (just a tad extra survivability at most when defending)

This is a good example. It wasn't just the enormous amounts of healing it could do, it's the fact that you were able to reduce damage while doing it. On the other hand, didn't LOD have very limited space for inventory? They needed something to offset the limited resources. Just didn't do it right I guess.

 

[whitesphere]

You could have a type of ability I grant my Necromancers routinely:

A spell or Skill which takes HP from the target and gives most of it to the caster.

So "Do 1000 HP of damage, get 800 HP healed" type of thing.  (or whatever fraction is right for game balance)

Since it's a spell, the TP or MP limits how often the Necromancer can do this.  But if you have that as the sole type of healing, you could have a 0 MP cost version which heals a much smaller chunk of HP (1000 HP damage = 100 HP healed for example) and does it much more slowly so the enemy always gets a hit in.